


catch a deluge in a paper cup

by Chronolith



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Post-Canon, but i refuse to watch it, i recognize that s8 happened, or accept anything that happened within it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 18:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21414736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronolith/pseuds/Chronolith
Summary: Blind, deaf and dumb he'd recognize her.Or, Lance goes to a party, saves the girl, and gets proposed to. Only one of those things was intentional.
Relationships: Allura/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58
Collections: Haunted VLD Exchange 2019





	catch a deluge in a paper cup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tookbaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tookbaggins/gifts).

> things this fic does not do:  
* explore the unholy political clusterfuck that s8 left the vld universe in  
* dwell upon the fascinating implications of cross-species cultural exchange  
* subject Lance, Allura, or their relationship to the deep analysis I know in my heart they deserve.
> 
> what this fic does:  
* takes my OTP out and shows it a good time.
> 
> WELP

Lance is at a party. Also: water is wet, and the sky is blue. (This is not, in fact, true on this particular planet where the sky is the steady, malevolent golden-green his abuela used to swear meant hail was coming and water feels almost sticky against his skin thanks to planet’s weak gravity, but that’s not the _point_. The point is the parable. Metaphor. Something. Some sort of literary device that he totally learned about at the Garrison and then promptly forgot because who the fuck needs to remember weird literary conventions when you’re fighting angry purple chinchillas with a collective hard-on for colonialism? Nerds, that’s who.) Things that are unremarkable in their constancy until someone actually starts paying attention. 

If someone had told Lance-at-sixteen that his post-war life would involve a lot of parties with questionable beverages and fawning hangers-on making doe eyes at him—or whatever passes for doe eyes for their particular species—he would’ve been _ecstatic_. Over the moon. Over several galaxies’ worth of moons. Now, however, he’s starting to wonder if he might have miscalculated and maybe Keith had been onto something with his feral goblin schtick. 

He smiles, sweet and insincere, at some minor dignitary who coos compliments at him that don’t really register around the way Lance has to scan the conversation for any sort of diplomatic fuckery. He finds none, registers mild surprise at their absence, and makes inconsequential pleasantries back until said dignitary floats (literally floats, the Hanar are a water-based species that’ve worked out how to interact with land-based species via a complex system of gravitational aids that made them look like giant, floating pink-silver jelly fish. Pretty, if you were into tentacles. Lance doesn’t judge.) away with little gold ripples indicating pleasure rippling over their exo-suit. 

Lance sighs.

Life’d been easier when they’d been scrambling to keep from getting steamrolled by the Galra war machine. Way easier to deal with Galra empire when it’d been trying to blow his face off with Haggar’s crazy assed robobeasts, legions of remote fighters, and a really disturbing dedication to the whole ‘victory or death’ aesthetic. Now that the empire is, hypothetically, dismantled and the Galra are once again fellow intergalactic citizens and not fuzzy purple overlords, the threats came in the form of verbal bombs scuttling trade deals and amnesty negotiations. Little conversational knifes snick-snicking apart alliances, leaving vulnerable planets ripe to be shuffled into the post-empire Galra ‘confederacy’ under the guise of ‘development projects’ and ‘civil society building.’

Like the Galra aren’t the precise reason so many planets, sectors, star systems had shattered economies and fucked up societies. 

This whole life-after-empire thing is a concept Lance thinks the Galra are collectively having problems with. And they insist on demonstrating their trials and tribulations with being newly ‘post-colonial’ at every damned diplomatic event. 

In short: fuck parties and all the verbal ninjutsu that comes with them. He’s been lied to. Used. And he’s set to be bitter about it.

He’s leaning against the wall, glass half full of something that tastes like strawberry cough syrup decided to have a love affair with a jalapeno and kicks like an enraged alpaca. He’s mid-mingle—a social butterfly between flowers—and trying to get a sense of the shifting political currents in the room. Technically he’s not obligated to, it’s not one of Allura’s diplomatic functions, but he finds himself doing it out of reflex. Social muscle memory, as it were, to look for the little tête-à-têtes and the wallflowers. 

People mill about in that particular pattern that suggests no one really knows anyone else, but no one wants to _look_ like they don’t know anyone. Small talk dressed up to look important for sheer lack of anything to compete with it.

Lance doesn’t even jerk when dark arms, way too slender for the unholy strength held within them, wrap around him and snuggle him close. Brilliant blue eyes peer up at him when he looks down. She’s got his arm cuddled between her breasts and she leans her cheek against his bicep. Adorable. It’s the move of a person used to working with a lot more real estate in the chest area than is on immediate display.

“Romelle,” he says by way of reprimand and greeting. He tries to surreptitiously wiggle his arm free, but she’s got him in an iron grip. Romelle blinks up at him with studied innocence.

“Why are you calling me Romelle?” Romelle asks with a purring flirtatiousness that Allura’d cut out her own tongue before attempting.

Lance raises one eyebrow slowly.

She pouts at him with Allura’s face. Twisting Allura’s fine-boned, aristocratic features into a little girl sulk. “You weren’t supposed to figure it out this quickly.”

Lance lets his other eyebrow join his hairline and Romelle rolls her eyes.

She waves one hand at him. “Yes, yes, true love that conquers death itself blah blah blah,” she says with such an overdone dismissiveness that it makes Lance snort. “You still could’ve at least _pretended_ to think it was her.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Nah.”

She shakes his arm in her grasp. “_Ugh_,” she says eloquently. “You two are so in love it’s gross. You are so gross. Stop it.”

He grins at her. “Nah.” 

She sticks her tongue out—a cute expression that borders uncanny valley-ness, something about watching Romelle’s expressions play out across Allura’s delicate features. It brings into focus how constrained Allura can be in her reactions, her presentation to the world—always aware of the eyes on her, judging her, making a million little decisions about her that eventually grow into one, large decision—to trust her or to not trust her—each based on the most random of things. Romelle has never had to consider any of those things and it shows in the expressiveness of her gestures, the expansiveness of her response.

Uncanny valley—like seeing a version of Allura who’d never had to learn to second guess her every gesture.

“I thought you weren’t going to bother with this little shindig,” he comments idly. People are watching them surreptitiously, _just_ this side of sly. One day he might get used to it, but probably not any time soon.

Romelle shrugs. “I wasn’t going to, these things are so boring, but Allura asked.”

“And you have never told Allura no about anything in your entire life.”

“Neither have you,” Romelle retorts, nettled, “and besides, the hosts were _so_ excited about seeing our costumes, how could I disappoint them?” She says this with a little flutter of her lashes.

Lance takes in her expression of overdone innocence and then does a pointed survey of her outfit, just a slow sweep from the top of her coronet of braids to the toes of her little kitten heels. “I’m pretty sure shape-shifting defeats the purpose of a costume party.”

Romelle sticks her—Allura’s, something, gods that’s confusing—nose in the air and sniffs imperiously. “It’s not my fault Alteans have superior abilities for this sort of competition.”

There’s so much going on with that sentence Lance honestly isn’t sure where to begin. He gives her a skeptical look. “It’s not supposed to be a competition.”

“There was a sign-up sheet at the door,” Romelle notes. “And prizes!” 

This is, unfortunately, true, but Lance is pretty positive no one had counted on shapeshifting Alteans deciding to join in the festivities. (And besides, the Hanar had only the shakiest of shaky grasps on the entire idea of a ‘costume’ anyway, as a species that doesn’t really have clothes outside of an intricate exo-suit and communicated via technicolor light displays.) He changes tactics. “What’s your costume even supposed to be? Besides an impressive Allura-suit, like that isn’t hella creepy.”

Romelle runs a hand down her body and flutters her lashes. “I think I have the perfect ‘princess’ costume, don’t you?”

“There is literally no safe way for me to answer that. And I still think this is cheating.”

Romelle stretches up on her tip-toes and presses a quick kiss to his cheek. There’s a flash somewhere off to the left of them. When he slides his gaze to the side a junior diplomat quickly hides what passes for a communication device in this sector and Lance sighs again. He sounds like his abuela on a rainy day and it’s all Romelle’s fault. 

“Don’t hate the hater,” Romelle tells him with mock seriousness, grin wide and mischievous. It’s an adorable look that he’s literally never seen on Allura’s face. Until now. The sense of uncanny valley-ness returns with a vengeance and leaves him a little dizzy watching Romelle’s mannerism on Allura’s face, in her voice. It’s like watching projection of Romelle superimposed over Allura’s body. “Hate the game.”

“That’s not what that saying means.”

She blows him a kiss. “Don’t care.” She steals his drink and downs all of it in one go like the universe’s most horrifying shot. “Oh, yuck, ryncol.” She makes a _bluh_ face and shoves the glass back at him like she hadn’t stolen it from him in the first place. “I’m going to go find better alcohol and then win the costume contest.”

“More like: get drunk, make a scene, and the get kicked out of the costume contest for cheating.”

She waves this off with an imperious wave of one hand. “Nothing in the rules said anything about shapeshifting. I _checked!_”

Lance gives her a look that says exactly what he thinks of that and she grins at him, fanged and utterly unrepentant.

He’s struck with a sudden premonition and it’s all bad. “What the hell kind of shenanigans are the two of you playing at?”

Romelle mugs an innocent expression that works way better on Allura’s face than it ever did on Romelle’s, which is honestly a little alarming to think about. “Why would you say that?” She presses a hand to her chest and cocks her head so she’s peering up at him through her lashes. It’s a coy posture entirely at odds with the reserved poise Allura prefers to carry herself with. How either of them expects anyone to look at Romelle playing at being Allura and be fooled, Lance does not know. “We would _never_.”

Lance can’t stop one disbelieving eyebrow from winging towards his hairline. “Do you want me to give the list refuting that statement alphabetically or in chronological order?”

“Oh, whatever.” Romelle rolls her eyes and then blows a raspberry at him for good measure. “It’s Halloween! You can’t be mad at me during Halloween.”

There are times when Lance isn’t sure if Romelle legitimately just does not understand how Earth holidays work or if she’s just fucking with him. This one of those times. He narrows his eyes at her, trying to figure out her game, and she giggles at him. “What in hell kind of game are you playing? If this blows up in our collective faces, I am blaming you. I’ll throw you right under that bus, no hesitation.”

She shrugs one slender shoulder and flutters her lashes at him. “It won’t blow up. We’ve got _contingences_.” She draws out the word with relish. He watches, bemused, as she folds her hands together behind her, arms locks straight, and then spins like she’s got too much energy can’t help but move to divest it. Lance is pretty certain if Allura ever did that move, he’d die from the cuteness of it. He’s pretty close to expiring as it is. “Besides, this a gift! From me to you. So, you don’t need to look at me with all that suspicion.”

He points at her and she bites at his finger playfully. Seriously, she isn’t even _trying_. She is the worst body double. It is her. “You are a liar, and I’m gonna find out about it sooner or later.”

She darts in, all snow-white hair and lethal reflexes, to press a kiss against his lips. “Later,” she says and then kisses his nose. “For now, enjoy the evening and don’t say I never did anything nice for you.”

The crowd parts around her as it always does for Allura, diplomats and socialites alike making space for her in their ranks, and Romelle lets them sweep her away in a wave of idle chatter and verbal knives. Lance isn’t sure Keith, or the Blades, knew what they were doing when they’d started teaching Romelle the basics of spy craft. There seems to be something fundamentally unwise about teaching someone with Romelle’s proclivities how to play with people’s expectations and then setting her loose upon the universe. He shakes his head as the crowd eddies around him, pulled along in Romelle’s wake, each of them hoping to catch a moment of what they think is Allura’s time. 

It’s something she hates, the constant simpering for her attention with fake concern, and none of them have figured out a way to protect her from it.

Lance considers for a moment finding something to drink but gives that one up for a lost cause pretty quickly. Alcohol tended to be one of those things where you could pick two, but not all three: tasty, safe for human consumption, not made out of something that would make Lance gag to think about. The Hanar had the second two down, but first one, well, ‘an acquired taste’ didn’t even begin to cover it.

It said something about Shiro that he actually _liked_ ryncol. Several things, really, and none of them good.

The party moves around him in odd currents, the sound of people and music cresting over him in the particular doppler effect of sentient beings all spontaneously discovering the room had fallen silent and then awkwardly rushing to fill it with whatever trivial topics they could find. He leans back against his trusty wall—well aware he’s pulling a page from Keith’s ‘stoic war hero, very serious, much toughness, wow’ playbook—and just lets it wash over him. It’s comforting, in a way, that no matter how far from Earth this whole post-war diplomacy thing takes him, certain flavors of awkwardness are universal and ‘no one knows anyone at this party’ awkward is one of them.

Lance leans against the wall and listens to the tempo of the conversations, listening for the ones that are just ever-so-slightly off. He’s not surprised when he finds one.

He spots her when he opens his eyes. Dark hair cascading over bare, dark shoulders, a slender form wrapped in frothy white that could double as a wedding dress. Assuming they even have weddings in this sector of the galaxy. (They don’t. The Hanar have long rituals around adoption of children, but how those children come into the world is a thing no one really discusses and earns the questioner a lot of uncomfortable sideways glares. Lance had, maybe, figured that one out from firsthand experience.) Her companion is a Galran diplomat of middling importance. Dark purple fur blending into deep blue at the tips of his ears, fur left to grow long and then wrestled into something that could be considered a ponytail if one were generous. Which Lance is not. The mullet look is terrible on Keith and it’s even worse that he’s managed to infect the rest of the universe with it. A _travesty_.

He figures out what’s wrong with the conversation on the approach, feet moving before his conscious mind has quite figured out what’s wrong. The tightness around the corners of her eyes, the stiffness of her smile. The subtle twitch of her shoulders as she tries to delicately shake the Galran’s massive, clawed hand from her arm. The soft smugness of the Galran’s smile as he pretends not to notice and persists. Various things, little things, he’d picked up at a glance without consciously registering why.

“I know you,” he says loudly, cutting right over whatever the Galran had been saying. The woman turns to him, brilliant blue eyes wide with shock. “Don’t I?”

“I,” the woman stutters and the Galran tightens his hand around her arm, making her wince.

“You are interrupting,” the diplomat growls. It’s a good growl, low and vibrating in his throat in just the right way that promises pain and violence if he doesn’t get his way right now. Lance imagines that growl had really served him well in Zarkon’s warmachine of an empire and he’s probably really, _really_ pissed that it isn’t working so well anymore.

Lance smiles with all his teeth.

“You’re the Blue Paladin,” the woman says softly. Her eyes are very bright. For a second he’s entirely captivated, like he’s staring into the heart of a dying star. “Aren’t you?”

He shrugs, diffident, and cocks his head to one side. “The Red and the Blue,” he agrees. “When we used to have semi-sentient robot lions running around the place.”

“A paladin,” the Galran repeats. There’s a particular tone Lance’s gotten used to that the Galran uses. A sort of snide surprise almost always accompanied by a dismissive up-down visual sweep of Lance’s body. “Really?”

Lance rocks back on his heels. “Galling, isn’t it?” He says agreeably. “That such a weak, skinny little thing kicked all your asses? Now,” he turns back to the woman. The corners of her eyes are crinkling in a way that suggests that she really wants to laugh but is just barely managing to restrain herself. “Where do I know you from?” He holds up a hand to stop her as she opens her mouth and presses two fingers of his other hand to his temple, aping a thinking gesture. “No, no don’t tell me. The Officers’ Ball on Centauri Seven? The one where Ambassador Mollari got drunk, flirted with G’Kar, caused a diplomatic scandal and then fell in a fountain, right?”

She hides her giggles behind one slim hand and nods. 

He leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “Okay, but now you need to help me out, because while I _know_ I know you, and I never forget a face—especially a pretty one,” he winks outrageously and she giggles again, “I’m just _awful_ about remembering names.”

He’s great with names, actually. The entire debacle with the weird, multi-dimension gameshow from hell had solved that little problem.

“I … um.” She blinks at him for a moment and then seems to catch herself. Or maybe just catch on. “I was with the journalist corps trying to, um, help Ambassador Mollari out of the fountain? Amue Kurogane?” 

He snaps his fingers. “_Yes!_ Thank you. Also, you are a liar.”

She colours slightly, eyes widening, and the Galran next to her—probably sensing an opportunity to interject himself again—starts to puff up.

“No one in that journalist corps was interested in helping poor Londo out. But you _did_ scold me for pushing him back in.”

“It was very mean,” she says, a relieved grin starting to spread across her features again. Her cheekbones are high and sharp enough to cut glass. The arch of her eyebrows could be from any fashion magazine. “If funny.”

“You also didn’t believe me when I said I could play the Tetris theme song on wine glasses.”

Her smile gets bigger. He suspects the possibility of dimples. “I don’t know what Tetris is, and couldn’t tell you its theme song for a yarmalk yodel, but it’s not like I could possibly take your word for it after you pushed the Centauri ambassador into a fountain, now could I?”

The Galran diplomat says something that they both ignore.

“You know,” he says, drawing out the vowels ridiculously to get her to laugh again. “They actually have crystal wine glasses here. I could prove it to you, if you want?” The offer comes out just this side of shy, just a little chink in the studied confidence that he wears like armour. 

She slides out of the Galran’s grasp in a move so sinuous it nearly steals Lance’s breath away. She grabs his arm like a lifeline, fingers digging into the fine fabric of his suit. He’s struck again by the deep blue of her eyes, the way corners of her lips curl ever-so-slightly like she knows a secret from the rest of the universe. “I couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity to watch you make an idiot out of yourself.” She considers her words. “Again.”

_Rude_. So rude. And in spite of it all, he likes this girl _so_ much it overwhelms him.

“I would also enjoy seeing a paladin of Voltron make a fool of themselves,” the Galran says with a smile that is, Lance guesses, supposed to be sly.

“No,” Lance says as he closes his hand over ‘Amue’s’ fingers, hiding the way her knuckles of have gone white. “I don’t know you, you see? And it’s not like I’ll make a fool of myself in front of just _any_body. So, you can continue to mill around over here,” Lance makes an expansive gesture, “reminding everyone of the time when the Galra had an empire and were real assholes to everyone and how you’d really, _really_ like to go back to that time and not, you know, talk to me.”

“You would _dare_—"

“Have fun,” he says as the Galran diplomat continues to splutter at him, fur all puffed up like an offended kitten. He smiles winsomely as the Galran diplomat sputters before sweeping ‘Amue’ off into the crowd before she can do some déclassé, like laugh in the ambassador’s face. He tugs her along after him as he weaves his way into the crowd. He leans in as they walk. “He _was_ being a creep, right? You weren’t just playing along because you were humouring the crazy person?”

“Oh no,” she rushes to reassure him. “He was definitely being a creep.” She shrugs with one shoulder, elegant and dismissive. “Just … typical Galran, you know? Very convinced of his superiority and determined to let everyone know it.”

“Did he give you a name we can blacklist?”

She blinks at him. “That seems a little extreme. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, exactly, just ….”

“Being a creeper is doing something,” Lance refutes as she sighs at him. “Besides, we should blacklist him for that outfit alone.” ‘Amue’ giggles, curling around his arm a little to keep herself quiet. “It looks like he fell on a discount costume rack for middle-aged war enactment enthusiasts and had to buy it because of damages. But now that he’s got all that dreck, he’s committed to the look and has to wear it out. Brocade _and_ tulle? In that colour with that fur? Oh my god.” At this she gives a much less delicate snort that she tries to hide with one hand. “Am I going to need to quietly introduce you to Romelle so you two can ‘switch’ or have you guys already worked that one out?”

Allura stares at him. He grins back. He loves the expression she gets when he reminds her just how smart and sneaky he can be. Which is handy, because he’s smart as fuck all the time even if he doesn’t get to show it off very much.

“What gave me away?”

Lance doesn’t want to tell her that he’d recognize her anywhere, disguise or no disguise. Blind, deaf, and dumb he’d know her. He taps his bottom lip with one finger as he pretends to think about it. She shakes his arm in annoyance until he laughs. “The eyes, I think?”

She blinks those impossibly blue eyes at him as if to prove his point.

“You always get this very particular look when you’re humoring someone you think is an idiot. It’s distinctive!”

“And I suppose you’ve had a lot of time to learn to recognize it.”

He presses a hand against his chest and gasps dramatically. “_Rude!_”

Now she does laugh, long and hard. It’s a good laugh. Clear as a bell and breaking off into an infectious little giggle at the end. He loves her laugh and has privately dedicated the rest of his life to making sure the universe hears it as often as possible. 

“So now you’re going to sweep me off to dance?”

He spins her so her dress bells out around her in a whisper of fabric. She moves with him easily, as if she were meant for this—meant to be the princess at the center of a ball—and she probably had been in a different universe, but that didn’t mean she wants it.

“You know,” he says with that obnoxious drawl that always makes her laugh at him. “I really do know how to play the Tetris theme song on wine glasses.”

She grins back at him, mischievous and delighted with herself. “I _absolutely_ do not believe you.”

“Want me to prove it?”

“Yes!”

Lance tucks her hand into the crook of his arm and grins at her. There’s a half second of ‘oh no’ that flashes over her features before he straightens up into his full height—it’s funny as all hell when people realize just how tall he’s gotten—to try to find the waitstaff he’d made friendsies with earlier in the evening. 

“T’kar!” He calls, loud and just the sort of demanding to pierce through the noise of a crowd like the crack of a gunshot. The Hanar in question floats upward in a gesture that Lance’s learned to interpret as gleeful expectation. The crowd around them start to murmur and Allura whispers, soft and fond, _dammit, Lance_. “I’m going to need, like, fifty of the crystal wine glasses, three pitchers of water, and one silver spoon. Can you do that for me?” T’kar waves two tentacles in cheerful affirmative. “Good man! Uh. Squid? Anyway, bring them over here.” 

Allura has one hand over her face. “_Lance._”

He pulls her fingers to his lips and kisses them gently to try to hide his grin. She peeks at him through her fingers and for all she’s trying to look stern, she’s laughing too hard to manage it. A matched set is what they are. 

“You are probably going to want to shift back to your normal glorious visage for this next part.”

She drops her hand and cocks her head like a dainty bird of prey. “Why?”

“Because this is going to be very impressive,” he says to her solemnly. “You’re going to throw yourself at me and declare your undying love on the spot.”

“I’ve heard _that_ before,” she says with sly arch of one eyebrow.

He clutches at his chest and leans against her dramatically. Pressing the back of one hand to his forehead he groans as if he’s dying. “I have been slain. Slain! Such slander against my sexual prowess!”

Allura shoves at him where he’s draped all over her like a particularly dramatic fainting damsel. “You are a ridiculous, ridiculous creature.”

“But _your_ ridiculous, ridiculous creature.”

That makes her pause for a moment, just long enough for Lance’s stomach to swoop and then tie itself into knots. “Yes,” she says like she’s just decided something. “Yes. You are.”

The suddenly serious tone makes him blink at her, off balance and confused, as she pulls him to stand. His stomach climbs up his esophagus and makes itself right at home under his adam’s apple when she sinks gracefully to one knee. Her dress spills around her like it’s been made for exactly this. She looks like she’s been plucked out of a fairytale and set down in the middle of this incredibly silly party.

Whispers spring up around them, a delighted susurration of titillation, as Allura lets her form bleed back into her normal countenance. Black hair bleeding to white, dark skin warming into a glorious brown, glass-cutter sharp cheekbones softening into her normal delicate features. She presses his knuckles to her lips, a teasing mimicry of his earlier gesture. Maybe if they didn’t have the entire sweep of history between them—a hopeless rebellion against a multi-millennia old empire consisting of five teenagers, one traumatized war veteran, and an alien princess desperately trying to hide how far out of her league she was—he’d be more aware of the differences between their social statuses. But as her eyes twinkle up at him over his knuckles, gone white as he clutches at her hand, he realizes that introspection right now would be like doing calisthenics under heavy bombardment: ill-advised, unnecessarily difficult, and likely to result in severe injury. 

“Do you Lance—”

“Yes,” he blurts out. The force of the word surprises both of them. “_Hell_ yes.”

Allura frowns at him. “I haven’t even finished my proposal.”

He waves his other hand around. There’s a slight air of hysteria to him that he can’t seem to get under control. He feels like he swallowed an entire box of pop-rocks and then followed them up with one of those old carbonated sugar drinks his momma told him were gonna rot the teeth out of his head. “I mean.” He swallows hard, well aware his eyes are roughly the size as Balmeran-standard dinner plates. “It’s not like I’m ever going to tell you ‘no.’ About anything.”

She purses her lips like she wants to argue that one. (It is, in fact, an argument they’ve had before. He’s too easy for her, she thinks. Too willing to let her do whatever she likes. He disagrees. It’s an ongoing discussion.) There’s a moment, a breath held too long, when he thinks she might start that fight (again) in front of God and everyone, but she breathes out and the moment passes.

Allura pins him with a stern look and he works to look suitably abashed.

“Let me finish.”

“Of course.”

She gives him a narrow-eyed, suspicious look.

“I will always ensure you finish first.”

Really. She shouldn’t give him openings like that if she doesn’t expect him to take them.

“_You_.” She shakes his hand where she has it captured in her own. He gives her a little shrug, unrepentant, and she presses another kiss to the back of his hand. “Listen. Then respond.”

“Yes, Allura,” he chirps dutifully. 

“I don’t even know why I want to ask you this, but I do.” Allura sits back on her heels and she is a vision in frothing white silk and perfect midnight skin. “I never knew it was possible to despair of someone so intensely you wanted to kiss them until you couldn’t breathe, but here we are.”

“I try,” he says with a flutter of his lashes.

“Hush,” she rebukes softly. “Will you marry me?”

“I have been trying to say yes to that question for a while now.”

“You have no sense of,” she pauses for a moment, clearly thinking for the right word, “showmanship.”

Lance arches an eyebrow at her. “I’m about to play the theme song to Tetris on fifty crystal wine glasses for you and you want to say I have no sense of showmanship?”

She laughs as he pulls her to feet and swings her around in a graceful arc before dipping her. She moves with him beautifully. She always does. “Clearly,” she says as she presses tiny butterfly kisses to his lips, “I was mistaken.”

“Also: ‘yes,’ if that wasn’t clear.”

“It was clear,” she says. There’s laughter in her voice, in the crinkles around the corner of her eyes, in the way she curls towards him as if she could hide her laughter behind him. 

“You two!”

Rather than break apart, they curl tighter together, presenting a unified front in the face of Romelle’s ire. Romelle steadily shapeshifts out of Allura’s form as she stalks towards them. Pale white locks bleeding into her warm golden hair, face rounding into her cherubic features, chest threatening the structural integrity of her clothes.

She stops in front of them and crosses her arms. Lance swears he can hear the delicate buttons of her frock groan under the strain. “When I said I’d give you a free evening to get away from the press, _this_ was not what I intended.”

Allura flutters her lashes at Romelle. It’s so much Romelle’s expression when she’s trying to play innocent that Lance has to turn away to hide his snickering. “But you are always telling me to seize the moment?”

“To go make out with him! Get laid!” Romelle exclaims. “I had _plans_ for how your engagement was supposed to go and now they are all messed up.”

T’kar floats up to them, skin rippling with the particular pale lavender that indicates uncertainty and chagrin. “Will you no longer be needing the wine glasses?”

Lance leans around the nervous squid as it wrings four of its tentacles together. Waitstaff are still carefully assembling the delicate crystal glasses in an ornate spread. He turns back to Allura with his eyebrows raised. She raises her own in reply. They have a brief, but spirited, battle of arched eyebrows before Allura—having the better groomed brows by far—wins.

“I was promised a show.”

Lance waggles his eyebrows again because he can and because it makes her laugh. Also, because he’s got an entire second cerebral cortex dedicated to be an ass. “I can give you a show.”

“_Ugh_,” Romelle announces loudly. “You two are so gross. So cute and so gross. Stop it.”

He looks at Allura. Her cheeks are flushed with good humor and her eyes are twinkling. Fuck the rest of the universe, this, this right here was the sum total of why he fought an entire empire of angry purple chinchillas with an alarming dedication to colonialism and the whole Klingon aesthetic. 

“Nah.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Tookbaggins,
> 
> This is horribly, horrendously late and I have many reasons (excuses) but really they can all be summed with "I am an idiot with poor time management skills."
> 
> Love,  
Chrono


End file.
